Tech

Nifty Art Site Is Snapchat Meets DeviantART

Online photo tools such as Snapchat allow users to share images that are meant to be seen only for a limited time, creating a sense of urgency for viewers. But what if there was a similar tool for another, less casual visual medium, like art?

Enter Slash Temp, a Japanese site that lets anyone post their artwork for a finite period of time. But its dynamics are a bit more fluid than Snapchat. In fact, the easiest way to explain Slash Temp is to describe it as Snapchat meets Reddit meets deviantArt.

Once a user posts a piece of art on Slash Temp, it will only remain visible for 24 hours — that is, unless someone comments on the image. Once this occurs, one hour for every typed character is added to the artwork's shelf life. For example, an eight-character comment adds eight hours to an image. So, an extremely popular piece of art could live on the site indefinitely, as long as the comments keep coming.

Each piece of art has a live clock, done up in 8-bit style, ticking down the time until the image is due to be removed. Depending on the time left on a particular piece of art, the image is labeled (translated from Japanese to English) "Super Extend," "Hyper Extend" or "Almost The End."

Slash Temp reveals very little information about its developer, but credits on the site link back to Tegaki Blog (or “handwritten blog” in English).

Launched via Twitter on Jan. 5, Slash Temp is geared primarily toward Japanese users, and features mostly manga-style art. However, there is also a limited English version of the site available, as well.

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